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EJToday: Top Headlines

EJToday is SEJ's selection of new and outstanding stories on environmental topics in print and on the air, updated every weekday. SEJ also offers a free e-mailed digest of the day's EJToday postings, called SEJ-beat. SEJ members are subscribed automatically, but may opt out here. Non-members may subscribe here. EJToday is also available via RSS feed. Please see Editorial Guidelines for EJToday content.

"PORTLAND, Maine -- A shell disease that has plagued the southern New England lobster industry for years by making lobsters unsightly and in some cases unmarketable appears to be creeping northward to the lobster-rich grounds off the coast of Maine."

"On John Bassler's 143-acre Piney Run Foxhound Training Preserve in Milford, Va., a densely wooded property lined with electrified fences to keep about 30 wild foxes inside contained, the chase is recreation, he said, part of a Virginia tradition commonly known as 'fox penning.'"

"A viable, effective vaccine against malaria has long eluded scientists. Results from a preliminary study have ignited hope that a new type of vaccine could change that. The experimental vaccine offered strong protection against malaria when given at high doses, scientists Thursday in the journal Science."

The study was extremely small and short-term. And the candidate vaccine still has a long way to go before it could be used in the developing world.

"A year ago, the Fish and Wildlife Service was poised to use a scientifically flawed range map for the American burying beetle during a preliminary assessment of the Keystone XL pipeline's effect on the endangered insect."

"WASHINGTON — As part of the climate change agenda he unveiled this year, President Obama made a commitment to significantly reduce the federal government’s dependence on fossil fuels. The government, he said in a speech in June at Georgetown University, 'must lead by example.' But just two miles from the White House stands the Capitol Power Plant, the largest single source of carbon emissions in the nation’s capital and a concrete example of the government’s inability to green its own turf."

"'An immediate and growing threat.' That’s how California’s lead environmental agency — and the Governor’s office — describe climate change in the latest in a series of periodic reports on the subject."

"Federal scientists investigating an unusually high number of dead bottlenose dolphins washing up on the East Coast said on Thursday the carcasses are showing up at a rate that is seven times higher than usual."

"When the Silver fire ignited about 2 p.m. Wednesday, officials say the stage was set for explosive growth that initially overwhelmed residents and the emergency crews sent to get them out of harm’s way."

"NEW YORK -- All of the notices U.S. regulators received to vouch for the safety of common food additives between 1997 and 2012 were submitted by people who had a vested interest in the outcome of those assessments, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Wednesday."

"TOKYO — First, a rat gnawed through exposed wiring, setting off a scramble to end yet another blackout of vital cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Then, hastily built pits for a flood of contaminated water sprang leaks themselves. Now, a new rush of radioactive water has breached a barrier built to stop it, allowing heavily contaminated water to spill daily into the Pacific."